


Darkside Tales

by Maldoror_Chant



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, Morbid Humor, Past Murders, Psychosis, Twisted, Twisted Attraction, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 02:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11910963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: A Preventer has caught a thief. How banal. Having a straight poker like Chang Wufei chain him up and hang him from the ceiling is atinybit on the left side of banal, but still within spitting distance, Duo judges. Nothing to see here, folks, keep walking.But on the darkside of this tale, like a cracked photographic plate, monsters of the mind are revealed.





	1. Angel of Death

**Author's Note:**

> This is a twisted fic that I find morbidly funny (I should have a psychiatrist on speed dial by now) but it is not actually meant to be taken as an In Character piece. At all. Please do NOT take this too seriously, do not read if you are at all attached to the clean-and-squeaky image of the G-boys, do not go any further if you're the kind of sensitive reader who needs proper warnings to decide what they want to read, because odds are, you shouldn't be reading this. 
> 
> Dedication: To Dacia many years ago, for her wonderful site's anniversary, A Little Piece of Gundam Wing. This was, ah, a bit darker than she anticipated when she gave me a loose description of what she wanted. 
> 
> Winner of Best Villain in The Devil with an Angel's Face Contest 2004! You are warned.

Some people would pay good money to get tied up like this.

Duo was definitely not among that strange number.

He just hoped nobody would take a picture. He'd found photos of rich people getting up to some pretty weird shit while he was going through safes and locked cabinets. He'd come to the conclusion that you needed to be a professional magazine model to look suave, cool and desirable while hog-tied. Ordinary people just couldn't pull it off.

Shinigami wasn't an ordinary person, but he didn't think the look did anything for him either.

Eyes closed, he tensed slightly, testing his bonds as discreetly as possible. Shit, this wasn't a slapped together job. Metal bars fastened to the manacles kept his legs and hands apart. The chains from the cuffs hung from the ceiling - Duo's shoulders were telling him that he'd been in this position for quite awhile and that they were not going to be happy moving out of it again unless they were subjected to the effects of a dozen aspirin and a good massage. A quick peek through his eyelashes, as he kept his body slumped, showed that the chains on his legs were also fastened to the floor, which put his captor in the ranks of very lucky or very knowledgeable about Duo's ability to kill a man with a single kick. He wasn't sure, but he thought his braid had been messed with too, so he might have lost his picks even if the metal bar didn't keep his hands apart and away from his hair.

Deciding he was effectively caught, for now, Duo scanned his last few memories for clues. What the fucking hell had happened... ?

The glimpse of the floor through barely opened eyes indicated he was on a ship, but not his own. The light 'wwiiiiish' of ventilation and the familiar flat, chemical smell of compressed and recycled air confirmed they were probably space born. Last he remembered, he'd been near the docking ring, going back to his shuttle. There had been no movement behind him. No signs of pursuit. Just a sudden sense of something wrong. Followed by a strong pinch of fingers on his carotid artery while an arm like a steel band immobilized him.

Damn. There were only a very limited number of people in the known universe who could do that.

Huh. Wonder which one it is? Duo tried to recapture every fiber of memory. Smell - neutral. The guy had been good. Cloth... rough. Jacket. Coarse and scratchy, a feel Duo associated with government issued clothing. And the hold had been firm, but relying on knowledge of the way people moved and fought, rather than brute strength.

That narrowed it down considerably.

Huh, waddya know. Well, playing possum would get him nowhere if that was the case.

"Why, Chang, I didn't take you for the kinky type," Duo drawled to the utterly still and silent presence he'd felt for the last few minutes.

He slowly straightened and opened his eyes, trying to will life back into his muscles, and pain out. Getting tied up just wasn't fun.

It was Wufei alright. He was sitting on a chair, cool as you please, watching Duo with an unreadable look on his face.

Duo glanced around discreetly while stretching. He was indeed in a shuttle, a very small one he judged. Beyond Wufei, he could see the main section, the cockpit, the door to a small head, a bunk bed folded up near the seats. Duo was in the cargo and airlock section. He didn't think this type of shuttle normally came with hooks soldered to floor and ceiling, but the job looked thorough and very solid. Even Heero would be hard put to bash his way out of this one.

Wufei still hadn't moved. The chair was an oddity in the shuttle, low and squat, made of black-lacquered wood. He was sitting a few feet away, on the other side of the doorway which framed him solemnly. He was wearing light black cargo pants, the cheap kind dockhands wore under their protective gear, and a black tank top and those cute little black slippers Duo remembered from the war. Duo was momentarily surprised his captor wasn't in uniform, he was quite certain he'd felt the cuff of a Preventer jacket against his throat earlier.

This was unexpected. Oh, not the fact that Wufei had jumped him, knocked him unconscious and tied him-... no, actually tying him to the ceiling was a bit unexpected, but not hugely off the map. No, what was unexpected was for this to happen now. He hadn't been doing anything much. The satellite they'd just left was the central habitat for several mining colonies, and pretty damn dull. The criminality there was all the petty drunk kind. Hell, it was already weird for a high-flyin' Preventer like Wufei to be there in the first place.

Duo had gone there for a job, something Hilde had wanted him to do. So he had. Then he'd broken into the central bank for the mining company, and also the director's suite while he was at it. Though that last had been boring, and had contained nothing of any interest whatsoever. No pretty curios, or unusual weapons, or anything that Duo might fancy. No naughty pictures of the director in bondage for him to pin up where the staff might find them the next day. He'd left, a bit disgusted. At least the bank had been okay. Hardly the best he'd seen, security-wise, but okay.

Was this why Wufei had caught him?

Didn't seem to be much point. He'd not taken anything from the bank. He didn't need to; money wasn't that hard to come by, in ways that were much safer than using numbered creds that would flag up as stolen if you took them from a bank safe.

Weird. Well, he'd find out, soon enough.

Wufei hadn't moved a muscle since Duo had spoken. Not a hair, either; damn, still that tight hairdo. And tighter ass, by the looks of things. Fuck, this was probably going to be boring. A lecture on the downfall of heroes, a slap on the wrist, and a jail sentence for breaking and entering. Crud. Why couldn't it have been Heero? Even Trowa would have been more interesting.

The silence was supposed to make Duo tense and nervous. The thought drifted through the back of his mind, not connecting with anything much. Duo looked around the cargo bay with interest, noting a few boxes in a net fastened to one side, and what looked like a medical kit on one of them. Why, Fei, didn't know you cared!

"So, we headed dirt side? Or to L1?" Duo asked, turning back towards Wufei when the cargo bay and room beyond had surrendered any possible interest they contained. He could feel the faint vibration of propulsion beneath his feet, and the creak and clank of metal resisting vacuum. He wondered how long he'd been out of it.

Wufei was looking at him fixedly. He still hadn't said anything. Duo checked him over.

"You're looking fit. Put on a bit of weight there, muscle. Of course, you've been working hard with the Preventers these past three years. Hey, have you had any news from Heero? Or Trowa? Or Quatre?"

Duo noted absently the way Wufei's eyebrow twitched minutely. He hoped Chang would say something soon. This was getting old.

"You know, I've managed not to get tied up since the good ol' days of OZ." Duo looked at the cuffs, then closer with renewed interest. Even without the bars separating his hands, he'd not get these off with his emergency stash of picks in his braid. Good quality. "These aren't Preventer issue, are they? Look dandy! For your own recreational use?" He laughed, trying to imagine Chang being so original and failing miserably. "That's okay, man! You wouldn't believe what people get up to sometimes. The bars are a bit over the top, mind you." He tried to roll his shoulders to ease the bite of cramp.

He thought he caught an angry glint in the black eyes. Same old Chang. Straight as a poker. Real pity Heero couldn't make the party. Shoulda been someone interesting. Someone real. 

"So, you treat all your suspects like this? And don't you have to read me my rights at some point?" Duo's knowledge of the law was hazy at best, well, the newfangled ones. He knew all he had to about martial law: who to avoid, who to bribe, who to kill on sight. It was part of his education on L2.

Wufei stood up. Duo watched him approach curiously.

Chang had been interesting during the war. Not like Heero, of course - no way - but there had been that moment in the OZ cell, with the air running out. Chang had looked like he was going to cheat God, with his meditative trance. Now that had been interesting. And Wufei had been intriguing on Peacemillion. Duo had rarely seen a guy who could so wonderfully not give a damn about anyone around him.

But after that, nothing much. He'd lost whatever small dimension he'd gained during the war. Just another little 2-D figure, scurrying around. Ran over to the side of law and order, a Preventer. How disappointing.

He was standing in front of Duo now, arms crossed over his chest, looking deep into his eyes. Duo looked back, waiting for something to happen. Anything, at this rate-

"Hng!"

The bars screeched against the chains as Duo's body tried to curl around the pain. It obliterated him for a few seconds, before he managed to breathe, deep rasps that eased the knot of hurt in his gut.

Fast. He hit me real fast. Right in the solar plexus. And... Duo analyzed the pain like a connoisseur tasting wine. Wufei had done something... hmmm... Duo tried to move, but his body was still leaden with shock and pulsing agony. Each breath was a battle. Wow. For a simple blow, that had been... Wufei had twisted his knuckles as they connected. After the impact had already done the damage, but it had added a little extra turn of the screw.

Duo blinked, and shook his head to clear out the pulse knocking in his ears. He took another shaky breath, pushing the pain away deftly. Well, well, well, who knew Chang had it in him.

"Huh. What was that for, Fei? If you're not happy to see me, I think I should remind you that you're the one who jumped me, put out my lights, dragged me aboard and chained me to the ceiling."

He had a closer view of Wufei's face now. He noticed the eyes widen slightly. He couldn't tell what the pupils were doing. Guy had eyes darker than a hole.

Duo braced himself as Wufei drew his fist back again slowly. Here we go again.

The dark eyes seemed to drink in his reaction. Duo waited, but the blow didn't land.

"It was to get your attention, mainly."

Duo relaxed a hair's breath. "'Hey, Duo!' normally works," he pointed out mildly.

He thought Chang looked every so slightly perplexed.

"It was also to test something," Wufei added slowly.

"Fair enough. When I want to test something, I normally bang on it. If it holds, it'll be reliable in battle," Duo agreed sagely as he straightened. It didn't look like any more blows were forthcoming. For now.

The confusion before him increased. It had been... too long since Duo had been with someone who actually paid attention to what he said. His patter was a bit off. He should be begging Wufei not to hit him again, or protesting angrily or... he fished around in his store of knowledge about how the 2-D people thought, looking for an appropriate reaction.

Shinigami didn't feel like bothering though. Duo poked the instinct throbbing through him like the echoes of Wufei's blow, wondering where it had come from. The guy was nothing; just a Preventer. Though an unconventional one. Normally the pigs asked you the question before beating you up, not after. Duo almost chuckled at the thought of Wufei reading the 'Cop Manual' from back to front, Chinese style, and getting it wrong.

"I wanted to be sure I remembered it right," Wufei said slowly, still scrutinizing Duo's features.

"Wazzat, Fei?"

"The way you seemed resistant to pain. A loud, glib braggart such as yourself tends to hide cowardice behind the facade."

" ...Isn't this getting off the subject of my arrest?" Duo was thoroughly puzzled now. "And I'd add that that macho shit of pain resistance being the same as bravery is bull. Avoiding pain is not a sign of cowardice, just a sign of bein' smart." Duo went to great lengths to avoid pain. Pain had the power to get inside your head, change it. Shatter you from the inside. Duo had known pain for a long time, he had spent a considerable amount of time and suffering, occasionally self-inflicted, taming the motherless bastard, but he still kept a great respect for it.

"You don't fear it though." Wufei had crossed his arms over his chest, and was scowling slightly.

"I took as many lumps as you during the war, pretty boy. A good deal more, I recall," Duo sniffed. "You want to beat up on me, you better have some brass knuckles handy. Don't want to damage those lady hands of yours."

Pain came in many varieties. The brutal beating of an angry man was much preferable in the long run to the more clinical blow Wufei had proven himself capable of. Duo wasn't sure he knew where Wufei's buttons were - the little he thought he knew about the man was obviously wrong. But some things were pretty much universal.

Or not. Wufei looked like he hadn't heard a word.

"I am going to ask you some questions-"

"Oh, so you did read the 'cop manual' the right way around,"

Wufei stared at him blankly for a second, before ignoring that as well.

"You are going to answer. Without all this useless jerking around."

"Wow. You said 'jerk'. You actually said-"

Wufei stepped aside and his leg flashed out.

Duo gasped and his muscles clenched and then turned to water under the abrupt shock. Wufei had struck right on the side of the articulation of Duo's knee, pushing it inward, against the resistance of the bar holding his legs apart. He hadn't done too much damage actually, Duo realized as he channeled a bit more pain into the darkness. Considering Wufei could have very easily dislocated and broken his entire knee and his ankle as well, he'd shown some restraint. Or maybe what he had shown was a threat. A promise of snapping tendons, grinding meat, shattered patella and pain. 

The blood throbbed in the wrenched muscles. It was a warm pulse of pain, timed to his heartbeat. Duo ignored it. It didn't matter.

"Stop. Talking."

"Huh?" Duo regulated his breathing and his voice found its usual cheeky drawl by itself. "Do you want me to answer your question or do you want me to stop talking? Make up your mind, Chang."

Black eyes rolled briefly in annoyance.

"Just answer my questions and stop this- this verbal outpouring."

"You haven't actually asked your question yet, Wufei," Duo pointed out reasonably.

"That's because I'm waiting for you to start taking this seriously," was the ground-out answer.

Duo thought about that for a few seconds. Seriously? Wasn't he taking this seriously? He wasn't sure what Chang meant. Unless he meant that he wanted Duo to treat him like he was real. Like he mattered. Well, Chang was slightly more interesting than Duo had given him credit for, but hardly that much more.

The sudden grip on his chin was like a vise. "Pay. Attention."

But he was. He was testing out Wufei's resolve, and looking for the words that would spin Chang's little mind around and make him set Duo loose. Or get Wufei to knock him quickly unconscious; he doubted the Preventer was pliable enough to get around with just words. So, pretty boy, just where are your buttons nowadays...?

There was a moment of silence. The grip on his chin would leave bruises. Chang was very close now, and Duo tested the leeway of his chains mentally, to see if he could get a head-butt in. Not yet. Maybe later. Make it a bit more fun.

"There's not much point in me beating you up, is there... " Wufei was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time.

Duo smiled, the movement crooked against the pull of fingers on his skin. "I'd rather you didn't, if that makes you feel any better," he admitted, because he always told the truth. "And you still haven't asked me your question. You know, it might be something I woulda answered anyway, without actually tying me to the ceiling and introducing your fist to my solar plexus."

"No. No, I need actual answers. And I won't get them from you, not like this." Wufei was talking softly, almost to himself. This was actually getting a bit intriguing. What did he want to know? Surely, if he was aware of Duo's little jaunt through the director's private suite, or even the bank job, there wasn't all that much to ask. Just clap him in irons - oh wait, done that already - and haul him off to jail, from which Duo would probably break out pretty damn quickly.

Maybe it was something else...

But if it was something else, the other stuff, then surely Chang would be... dunno, showing something else than this slightly annoyed perplexity. He looked like he was lost in Duo's home slums, trying to get from Avenue M to Hope Street, with all the road signs stolen and a few bomb craters in between, and he didn't really want to ask for directions.

"Pain is a good tool, and it comes in all shapes and sizes," Wufei suddenly announced, dragging Duo's attention back to him. "I didn't think I would be able to get what I wanted from you the physical way."

Duo shifted against the restraints. Although he really wasn't looking forward to the pain, he was curious to see what Chang was going to try now, almost as curious as to know why. As for the beating itself, or whatever Wufei had in mind, that probably didn't matter. He had to present a prisoner in roughly good shape at the end of the journey, after all, so he couldn't damage Duo permanently. Duo knew there were many ways of hurting people that didn't leave much visible damage, but he wasn't worried about that either; he could slip into unconsciousness as quickly as he could snap out of it, a good defense that had protected his body from other severe beatings in the past. And Chang was waaay too straight 'n narrow to try any kinky stuff. If he did, Duo would know just which buttons to start pushing, and they'd be back to straightforward punching before Chang could get whatever he thought he had in his pants out.

"It's all a question of leverage," Wufei murmured, looking very composed, clinical. "And I don't think you know pain as well as you believe you do."

Wufei's grip slipped from his chin to fasten to the back of Duo's neck as he leaned forward. The hand removed the possibility of a head-butt, unfortunately. Damn, if he was going to get the crap kicked out of him, it would be nice to have some sort of reason first-

"I fucked Heero Yuy."

The words were soft and gentle, right next to his ear.

Duo gaped blindly at the far wall in pure shock.

"Shortly after the war. Twice. The second time, he asked me... "

... What?!

"I was his first... "

It had been easier to breathe around the punch to his gut.

" ...and probably his last, to date... "

...

"He likes it rough... I guess you're not surprised to hear that... "

Wufei's breath was cool against Duo's ear; the words seemed to slither through the whorls and eat into his brain. Then his captor leaned back a bit. He was watching Duo as if judging the effects of his words. He showed no emotion, no satisfaction, no involvement at all. Duo wished he could believe this was a lie. But he seriously doubted it.

Heero... ?!

The magnificent soldier with a heart like space, cold and empty. The man courted Death like a lover, and Death had loved him. He was too perfect, too... unreachable. Heero should not- Heero being touched by anyone, anyone, didn't - just didn't-

Black eyes trailed over his face.

"I thought that would get your attention. I saw how you looked at him during the war. When you thought no one else was watching. I thought that that would hurt."

Hurt? Probably not in the way Wufei was suggesting but yeah, in a way it did. Something he'd cherished - the image of Heero, the child-killer pushing the button to his own self-destruct sequence with absolute uncaring - it had been... soiled. Contaminated. The picture of Heero on his back, sweating and moaning and wanting and living, with Chang over him, Chang, of all people - oh, that definitely got his attention. Heero's inaccessibility wasn't anything Duo would have killed for. It wasn't that kind of pain. But it did bother him.

And the way Wufei had used it... That had been a very good blow. Masterful, and Shinigami was a competent judge. What did Chang hope to accomplish with it? What possible kind of question could he have that would require something like that? And incidentally...straight as a poker? Better revise that opinion.

"Yeah, you have my attention. What do you want, Chang?"

"You don't want to hear any details?" Wufei's head tilted to one side, a gesture that might have been meant as coy but was too calculating. The man's entire being was a set of brass knuckles. "Do you want to know what kind of sounds he makes when he comes? Do you know what position he prefers-"

"I'm more curious about what you want to know," Duo interrupted a bit impatiently. The brief flash of pain, of disappointment at the loss of Heero's purity, slipped into the past and no longer touched him the same way.

Wufei was silent, watching him. He didn't look happy; maybe Duo should have showed more anger, more pain, but the latter didn't feel like wasting time posturing. Finally Wufei turned away and started pacing the cargo area. Apparently he had judged that Duo was taking this seriously enough now.

"I've been aware of your little thefts for some time," Wufei announced, speaking slowly.

"Oh?" Duo didn't bother to hide his surprise.

"Yes. You were careful, but I recognized your MO a couple of times. And no one else would be weird enough to break into Zurich's Etablissement De Credit Suisse to steal a small pair of diamond earrings, a packet of letters, an original edition of Hemingway, and then paint a smiley face on their main vault before leaving."

"It was beautifully round and had these two wheels on it that were just at the right spot for the eyes," Duo pointed out reasonably. He remembered that one. It had been Hilde's birthday and he'd forgotten to shop for it, and he knew that after that little break-in he'd have to get outta town pretty quickly. She'd liked the earrings. The letters had witnessed a torrid romance between two high-ranking Romefeller officers, and Duo still read them and howled with laughter on occasion.

"The book had to be the only thing of real value, to the right collector." Wufei was watching him from the corner of his eyes.

"Really? It was a bit dog-eared. And it was just a book."

Wufei blinked. He tried to cover for it, but Duo had seen it.

"Then why did you take it?" Wufei asked slowly.

"Quatre once told me that I'd like 'The Old Man And The Sea', so when I saw it in the insurance listings, I thought-"

Wufei was waving his hand to interrupt him, looking a bit annoyed. "No matter, no matter. I don't care about that stuff."

"You don't? Aren't you a cop?"

"I'm a Preventer, yes, but I work on serious crimes against Peace, I track war criminals and crime lords. I don't do petty theft. Or... grand but slightly deranged theft," Wufei added in a mutter that Duo managed to catch; it made him grin. "Let the police worry about that, it's their job. If they are unable to do it when it comes to you, that is none of my concern."

"O-kay." Duo rattled his chains a bit, like a slightly puzzled ghost wondering what he was doing at this particular haunting.

"You were beneath my notice. I have more than enough work as it is." Wufei was pacing back and forth and Duo thought he looked a bit harassed. Poor bugger; no wonder Duo didn't want a regular job if that was the kind of stress it generated.

"Then I was questioning a suspect a couple of months ago," Wufei continued. "And he asked me if I was the God of Death."

_What?!_

In his narrowing vision, Duo barely noted black eyes looking at him obliquely. They slitted in satisfaction at the clank of chains as Duo's surge of emotions caught against them.

"He said a lot about this person. A killer who strikes only the most protected crime bosses. No one knows how he gets in. He only kills his target, and none of the guards or entourage even catch sight of him. Some people even think he might be the ghost of fallen war victims, because he tracks down and carves up hidden OZ war criminals-"

"Who..." God whispered. "Who talked... "

Wufei spun around to stare at him fully, and then his eyes narrowed. Duo didn't bother to try to cover it. Someone had talked. There were Rules. No one broke the Rules.

"That does not matter," Wufei said slowly. But it did. It mattered. Blasphemy mattered. Duo broke through the seal of the present, reached into the future and placed a bloody cross on someone's lifeline. How could he get that name out of Chang... ? The Preventer probably kept files-

"Maxwell?"

Preventer systems were the hardest to break into; Yuy had seen to that. There might be an easier way-

The slap made him stagger against the chains, the injured knee throbbing with pain as it took his full weight. He blinked, and licked the blood from his lips.

"Pay attention!"

Chang. Chang wasn't important. He knew the information though- but he'd never spit it out, not even under torture. That was just the way he was. Duo looked at Wufei, knowing it would be better to pretend to care about what this negligible entity said, to avoid injuries that might slow him down, but Chang was already just one more obstacle in his way, something to work around.

"I'm glad you're not going to pretend to be ignorant about this," Wufei declared archly; still a stuck-up, self-righteous asshole, Duo noted absently. "Now, let's have the truth."

"Chang, I never say anything but," Duo murmured. Lies were for those who couldn't stand the truth. Duo had stared God in the face. He could stand anything.

"You are this contract killer they call the God of Death, right?"

Except for that!

" _Contract killer?!_ Me?! I'm no contract killer, Chang!"

Wufei took an instinctive step back as Duo threw himself against the chains furiously. The pain in his knee didn't exist. The chains were an inconvenience he wanted to ignore. This annoying little 2-D man had just accused him of being a contract killer, treating Death like a whore, selling God on his own altar!

Damn. I may just have to kill Chang if he says that again...

"Then why do you kill these people? Is it for revenge?"

Duo just snarled.

Wufei watched him carefully, and continued speaking, slowly. "Once I realized what this suspect was talking about - and once he gave me all the details about this God of Death- "

Someone had just committed a spectacular suicide after murdering his own family...

"- I thought of you. I remembered your nickname during the war. Besides, not many people could match your MO. I didn't think it was Yuy. He'd use a gun, not a knife. And the way security was bypassed...The first few victims I positively identified as your signature were ex-Alliance officers in hiding."

A look flitted across Wufei's face, like he'd smelled something bad. "Some of them were people I'd wanted to bring in for questioning. They were the worst, the venal, the greedy, they couldn't even justify their crimes with their ideals. But the Preventers would never touch them. When you spend twenty years skimming off the top, you can afford the best in security, and pay off the hounds. I'm sure you have a few corpses out there we don't even know about, they were so well hidden when you killed them."

Duo swallowed the feral laughter that was tickling him inside. Yeah, a few corpses.

"I thought it might be revenge. The few I learned about, all but one, had been garrisoned at L2. Is that why, Maxwell? Looking for revenge?"

Duo didn't answer. He was listening to Wufei but what the unreal little man was saying wasn't making sense when applied to him.

"But then I don't understand the others. The crime lords, and the couple of industrialists who were running weapons factories. I was almost wondering if this wasn't your twisted sense of keeping the peace, or justice, but then I remembered how little those things seemed to count for you back during the war."

Hard fingers caught Duo's chin again, forcing his head up. He stared into black eyes. Wufei didn't seem very excited by all this. Duo didn't waste a mental breath to wonder why; the creature didn't matter.

"That's why I assumed you were killing on contract. All these men had plenty of enemies who would pay for their deaths. I could see you taking up that career. Not as much as Yuy, or Barton, but yes, I could imagine that."

"You have an imagination? Will wonders never cease?" Duo laughed, ignoring the pinch of fingers. He ignored the punch - short, clinical, and quite neat - that followed, too.

"Now, tell me, Maxwell-"

"Yeah, I killed them. And probably a few more you don't know about." Duo shrugged, trying to temper his grin which was twisting the bruises on his face. "Haul me before the judge, put me in jail. Hell, if you let me out of these chains, I'll even write down the names and dates for you." Duo clinked the cuffs hopefully, though he didn't think Chang was that dumb.

"Why?"

"Well, not much point being coy," Duo chuckled. "It sounds like you figured out most of it by yourself. Good job, copper. I might as well-"

"Why did you kill them?"

"Heh?" Duo looked at him. Chang had crossed his arms over his chest again. That strange calm was still cloaking him. Duo felt a very faint surprise. He'd have thought a Preventer, and particularly Mr Justice Freak, would be a bit more excited by Duo's admission that he had a few corpses to his name, bar the ones from the war.

"Why did you kill those men? Some could be for revenge. I'd understand that. But not the others. If you say you didn't do it for a contract, why go to all that trouble and risk to kill these high-level criminals?"

"Why do you care?" Duo countered, puzzled.

They stared at each other for a second, and Duo thought his answer had caught Wufei by surprise.

Duo saw the blow to his gut coming, and he managed to both twist his body and relax into it, lessening the impact. He still saw little wobbles of color in his vision, and a couple of big bells were clanging in his ears.

Huh... Weird... there was a strange undercurrent here, like the taste of blood in his mouth. What exactly was Chang after?

"Tell me." Wufei sounded... business-like, and bored. It made Duo almost feel sorry for him. Duo hated being bored.

"Tell you what?" Duo coughed, trying to force the pain back into its kennel. "I told you I killed those guys."

"But why did you kill them?" Wufei's voice was so mechanical, so calm, like he could repeat that question again and again.

"Hmm. You used that tone of voice during the war. The 'it's all decided, and so I'm not going to get excited about it' voice." Duo had liked that voice. Chang had been interesting then. "But you'd lose your cool when you were fighting. You'd rant about weakness and justice and stuff - I'm surprised you're not - hng!!"

Duo licked the blood from his lips. But wow, those blows were so measured. Anybody else would have knocked Duo unconscious by now.

"Why. Did. You. Kill. Them."

" ...Chang... " Duo inhaled. The mass in his abdomen felt like it had grown claws and fangs, an entity in itself, trying to tear itself out of his body. " ...You're a crap cop... what matters is that you can prove I did it, and that I admit I did it, so who cares why I did it? If you get me to tell you that, it might be some shit about my childhood, like my daddy beat me up when I was ten so I hate the world. It's boring and it might even sway a jury. It's better to keep that under wraps. Just take the fact that- aoow!"

"Talk."

" ...uffff... might be... easier... if you s-stop... pu-punching me... "

"Tell. Me. Why."

"Why should I tell you?!" Duo coughed. He was getting annoyed. Getting beat up was something that happened in his universe, like hunger and dirt. But getting that question hammered into him along with a hard, clinical fist was just- "I don't spill my guts to the pigs, Chang. You're on the good side now - same as OZ when they wanted to execute me for the good of the fucking public. They didn't get much more out of me than 'yeah, I blow you guys up and I like it!', so why the fuck should I tell you more?"

The fist had paused half way to his gut again. Duo stared into black eyes like a tunnel. A small part of him was wondering where it led. Probably somewhere boring, where Justice was a universal truth, and bad guys got put in jail and good guys went to bed happy.

" ...You're still not taking me seriously... " The words were slow, less mechanical. But still... no anger. Just a bit annoyed, like he was trying to find some files someone had misplaced. Strange. Wufei was a cold fish, Duo remembered that much, but he was surprised the man was still acting like this was another day at the office. 

"Right... " the hand left Duo's chin. He braced himself - but Wufei just walked away. The surprise actually piqued Duo's interest.

"You gonna give up?" I should probably shut up, Duo thought. Nah, he immediately decided. "I thought you were a bit more, I donno, persistent than that. Or-"

Wufei turned neatly outside the door and sat down on his chair again. He leaned forward and picked something up off the floor, a little box with switches on it. Then he leaned back, a pose that was more relaxed than any Duo had seen him in before. He tilted the chair up on two legs slightly, and put a foot up on one side of the door seal. Nice legs, Duo thought, getting a very good view of them in that position. Not just the legs, either, he purred, as he noticed that the cargo pants were light and clung to some interesting curves. Heero must have had fun.

"I am persistent. But I do not like wasting my time," Wufei announced coldly, fiddling with the box. "There's not much point hitting you; you'd ignore it, or pass out."

True, Fei had shown a remarkable amount of understanding about Duo's reaction to pain. Hence the Heero thing. Duo hadn't forgotten about that, of course, but it was the past. And in the future, he didn't think Wufei would be able to top that for shock value.

"You're probably right. So, what are you going to do now?" Duo looked at the small control box Wufei held. There wasn't anything mechanical around him. Maybe the cuffs were wired for electroshocks... ? Hell, that would be... strange. It would make Wufei a bit more interesting, yet again. But still, pain was pain. Duo knew the bite and savage tingle of electricity running through his muscles and nerves, the way your heart seized and clenched, the helpless jolt and spasm that would last until you thought your spine was going to snap like glass. Been there, done that, Chang. Want to see the t-shirt? I gotta warn you, it's got puke on it.

Wufei was sitting there. Calm. No, not calm. Duo looked at him thoughtfully. Calm was something. What Duo was looking at was an absence. A pit. Like his eyes. It was waiting for something. It wanted something. And it was remarkably patient, considering this was Chang.

...Interesting... Duo wondered how he'd missed it before. It had been there all along, but it had been covered by a veneer of business-like calm. Now Wufei wasn't bothering with it. Now he was taking off the gloves. Whatever he was going to do now, it would match the darkness in his eyes. Duo glanced at the cuffs, but could see no evidence of wiring.

This is probably going to hurt. The thought didn't elicit more than a faint weariness and annoyance. The pain was in the future. Then it would blanket the present. And then it would be in the past. That was the way of things, since as far as Shinigami cared to remember.

Wufei flicked the small plastic guard off a switch, and thumbed it. For a second, nothing happened-

A howl, brief and startling - ears popped and rang - the air became a hard, tangible thing that grabbed him bodily, sucked him towards- then it was gone, and he was trembling, muscles clenched in raw fear, sweat leaping out over every inch of his body.

"Fuck!"

Duo's ears were ringing and his lungs ached. He panted. The air was cold, harsh and rare in his lungs; it tasted of iron. His eyes throbbed as if they were trying to squirm out of their sockets.

Wufei was still sitting there, in the red haze of Duo's vision. He held the control box casually. He was staring at Duo. Waiting.

God stared back.

Stared at the black shape, draped casually in the chair, body and mind a weapon to cut through to the bone. Terrible. And beautiful.

Duo shook his head, trying to clear the ringing out. I can't believe he did that. No-one - no one! - rigs their own spaceship to have the airlock open on command like that, while in space. He must have cut through ten layers of automatic responses and alarms. Fuck.

The door Wufei was bracing himself against to resist the brief, savage pull, had whined a bit, and its servomotors were still purring.

For once, Duo could see the future in a way that mattered. A press of the button, and the cargo bay door would open a crack - just a crack, not enough to let in explosive decompression and its swift mercy, no - and then Wufei's door would slam shut and seal automatically in response to the air pressure drop, protecting him from the cold vacuum of space that would kill Duo within a few long, agonizing seconds.

"You... " Duo licked his lips, reluctantly awed. Wufei was like him, a child of space; as such, it would take a lot of balls to rig his ship like that. To hit that button.

And he might do it again.

Duo bared his teeth. Yeah. Yeah. That could do it. Pain - he could deal with. Death - that was the future, it didn't exist. Words - coming from someone who wasn't even real, they didn't bother him.

But Wufei had mastered space...

It was the one thing Shinigami respected. Something that was even greater, crueler and more perfect than God. All the children of Earth respected it and feared it, when they'd been born in the pitifully flimsy tin cans they called Colonies. Once you'd seen what a hull breach could do - cold, uncaring fingers of vacuum ripping a man inside out, exploding eyes, lungs, blood vessels with a touch - you never forgot it.

Wufei knew this. He knew the fear bred into their cells, their bones. He felt it too, he had to, but he'd conquered his fear and turned it into a weapon.

"You... know what you're doing alright... Holy fuck... "

God stared at Wufei Chang. Seeing him for the first time.

This man was real.

This changed everything.

And suddenly things started to make sense. Duo managed to tear his eyes away from the dark shape on the other side of the door, waiting for God knew what, to stare at the medical kit. Its true significance hadn't occurred to him before. It was big. It had shifted in the netting that held it, under the savage tug of vacuum that had ripped through the hold for a split second. It had a resuscitation unit strapped to the back.

...Real indeed...

 

Wufei slowly held up the control box. His thumb caressed the button slowly. He measured Duo's flinch with his eyes, precision instruments to weight the exact amount of fear he'd managed to generate. Apparently he must have been satisfied. He put the control box down again and stood up from the chair.

He walked up to Duo slowly, pulling a red cloth from his pocket. It was soft as it passed over Duo's lips, cleaning up the blood and spit. Silk. The pressurization ache in Duo's ears was beginning to subside.

"Are you willing to talk now?"

"Yeah."

"Why did you kill those men?"

"Because I could."

The cloth paused as it wiped the tears that had beaded from his eyes under the effect of the dry cold that still lingered in the cargo hold.

Duo didn't wonder if his words made sense. Wufei had turned out to be real; he'd understand.

"What do you mean, because you-"

"They had the best, security-wise." Duo licked his lips, a bit dreamily. The cloth had felt very soft against them. "They were arrogant. You can't cheat God though. Sometimes I don't kill them-"

Because it was random. Death was random, and he was Death. He would watch them, silent as their shadow. The little 2-D men, the fake people, would play with their money or their whores, or run their empires, or sit back and thought and feared, and he'd be there, he'd watch them.

"Sometimes, I let them see me... "

Just so they'd know that God had come that night, that Death had been there, and had not touched them. Not tonight. And he'd leave them, frozen in fear, or cursing and reaching for a weapon he'd already removed, or just screaming their heads off, like primitive apes trying to scare away the night full of predators.

"And sometimes... "

"What? Sometimes what?"

Duo focused on black eyes again. Oh yeah, Chang.

"Why do you kill them? Is it because you want power over them? To try to prove to yourself you're better than them, when you see the fear in their eyes?" Wufei's voice was rich with condemnation and contempt, the most emotion Duo had heard from him so far.

"Hmm?" Duo blinked, considering the question seriously. He'd never really thought about it. "No, I don't think so. When I kill them, most times, they don't even see me."

Not until the blade had sliced into their throat. With the little catch and then give which meant he'd slid from the jugular to the trachea.

"There's a spot you hit - takes out the vocal cords. Stops them from doing more than blubber and groan. It gets noisy, otherwise. They're incapacitated, unconscious within a few heartbeats, dead soon after that. There's a trick, to stepping away at the right moment. I hate having to throw away... my... clothes... " Duo trailed off, as another interesting fact popped into mind. Huh.

"Then what's the point? Why do you kill them?" Wufei sounded confused, though he was apparently trying to keep his voice cold and business-like.

"You do keep harping on that. Why not?"

"Why them? Why not anybody?" Wufei probed with steely patience.

"Why not anybody... ahh, but Wufei, you just heard about the ones who had the best security, where my MO is the most obvious... "

A hand grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back. He let his eyes focus lazily on dark, intense features, scrutinizing him like some bug under a microscope. With a snarl of anger, or revulsion, that marred his lips - Wufei was really quite a nice-looking guy when he wasn't scowling like that.

"You mean you kill innocents, too?!"

"Who's innocent?" Duo found he didn't mind the hand in his hair, the savage tug. "No one is innocent. We're not even born innocent. We're all one and the same before God."

Duo was observing Wufei just as closely. What was the darkness in those eyes waiting for?

"God? Is this related to the Maxwell church massacre?"

"Oh, you did your homework. Poor Father Maxwell. He was a good man. He was real, or so he thought. But a stupid man, in the end. He met my God before he met his, that's for sure. And at the end, there's just bones."

"What?" Once more, poor Wufei looked confused.

"Father Maxwell prayed over me nightly, tried to persuade me that his God was stronger than mine. Before proving, rather conclusively, that this wasn't the case." Duo sighed. He didn't know what regrets were - they were something the fake people had invented to make the past more real, and bargain with the future - but he felt a slight taste of them when he thought of the Church, of Father and Sister. He'd wanted to defend them. He'd wanted them to go on trying to turn him away from God, because it was fun to argue with them, and because it was nice to have someone who cared about him. But God had decided that wasn't to be. And now they were the past and Duo had no regrets. He had God.

"But... but you were fighting the war to avenge their deaths. Weren't you?!" The hand pulled his hair, but he didn't think it was intentional this time.

Duo wondered why Wufei was suddenly getting agitated; he'd wanted this explanation. " ...Revenge? No. To be honest, it's not a concept I grasp."

"What?!"

"The concept. I don't get it. What's past is past. It can't touch you anymore, hurt you any more. Why fight for it?"

"But- the war- why did you fight?"

"Why? Because I could!"

Wufei was silent, his mouth slightly open. He had very beautiful lips, thin and delicate, the color of crushed orchids.

"It was Death on a grand scale, wasn't it... ?" Duo murmured dreamily, eyes still on those parted lips. "Besides, the pigs were killing L2. The colonists wanted to fight back. But they don't know Death. They're... they're lambs, not wolves. And they're mine. They shouldn't fight. They just get themselves killed before their time. It was almost a relief when they took themselves out of the fight and turned their back on me, though it did bite a bit, to start with. A bit cheeky of them. But I couldn't stay mad at them; they're too small to matter. I just defended L2, and the slums." God's temple. His favorite place of worship. "Yeah, the war was fun... me and Deathscythe. But it was a bit indiscriminate. Messy!" Duo grinned. "Everybody killing everybody. That's Treize's thing. But he's not God. Besides, if everybody dies, then it's no fun."

The hand whipped out of his hair as if burned. Duo pouted a bit; he wasn't sure if it was because that had hurt, or if it was because Wufei was now standing further away. Eyes wide, mouth working. Looked quite stunned.

"You're a psychopath," Wufei said slowly.

Duo nodded enthusiastically. "That's what G said!"

"He _knew_?!"

"Oh yes. Said it should come in handy. I was the real deal, too, according to him, the full clinical psychopath. Very rare, turns out. He said I could either be a great monster or a great hero, depending on the times; apparently when chaos rules, in civil wars, great heroes can be monsters. Or... vice versa. I can't remember which he said. He said a lot of shit, really. But he made a mean mecha!"

" ...I should have realized... " Wufei looked like he was staring at the result of a long equation he'd suddenly worked out. "You were the only one of us who never had any guilt over all the killing we did... the war barely seemed to affect you. All the others changed, were stretched to the limit, but this was just a sort of game for you! I didn't realize."

No guilt? That's an interesting point, Wufei, Duo reflected dreamily.

Wufei grabbed Duo by the collar, jerked him against the chains. His black eyes were endless depths, seen up close. Desperate holes. "You must regret something! You must feel some guilt! Some remorse!"

"Regret... ?" Duo hesitated, mumbled. "Regret... yes, I- I guess... "

He looked down at the floor, then quickly glanced up through his lashes. The darkness in Wufei's eyes seemed to pull him forward, drag the words out of him. "I have some... regrets... " he whispered, so low he could barely hear it himself.

Wufei leaned closer, body, face, eyes, everything tense as a wire. Waiting.

" ...One regret... " Duo leaned forward slowly against the hold on his collar and breathed the words into the ear near his mouth, "I do have one regret; I could have killed so much more if you hadn't caught me... " and kissed the cool skin near his lips.

Wufei stiffened. But he didn't move away. Like a black moth nearly pinned to the flame.

"Tell me," Duo whispered. Wufei smelled of clean skin with the faint bite of a crisp winter morning behind it, it was fresh, appealing. "Tell me, Wufei... that man who broke the Rules... " his lips brushed skin the color of copper, "the one who told you about me... "

" ...Rules?" Wufei still hadn't moved. His voice was hoarse.

"Rules. The little crooks all know about me. They defend themselves as they can." He was whispering the words into Wufei's ear. He could feel the brush of delicate skin against his lips, the heartbeat in the throat near his own. "They put up their defenses and sometimes they can keep me out. If they can't, their fate is up to me. But they don't tattle on me. Don't take the name of God in vain. That's against the Rules."

"Wait. Wait. Law? Rules?" Finally Wufei drew back a tiny bit, turning his head. "You said you killed other people than criminals."

"Sometimes," Duo whispered to those dark, searching eyes. "A lot when I was younger. But that's too easy now. I don't like getting bored. And my skills are very useful. I can't afford to get rusty; there might be another war tomorrow. So I break into just about anything. Keeps me in practice. I do try to kill only the criminals. I may be a psychopath but I'm not crazy." He sniggered, wrinkling his nose, and Wufei jerked as if finally waking up. "I don't want all the pigs after me, like during the war. Messy. Complicated. So I only play the game with those who know the Rules, who respect them and me, because they also come from the house of God, they've also seen Him, and they fear and respect Him. Oh, I don't leave you pigs alone, mind you," Duo murmured dreamily, eyes wandering to the view screen of the cockpit over Wufei's shoulder. "I have a lock of her hair... Une's... she sleeps very soundly in that little cubby-hole right off her auxiliary office on L4... " he kept the lock with a few other odds and ends... but he didn't feel like telling Wufei about that. That was too personal.

" ...You only choose your victims because-"

"It's merely convenient. As I said, they try to stop me, but they don't tell tales out of church. Now... about the man who told you about me." Duo focused on Wufei once more.

"Don't worry about him!" The arrogant snarl was back, though Duo thought it looked a bit shaken. "You will not have the occasion to add him to your collection of bodies. How many, Maxwell? How many have-"

"He's already dead, isn't he... " 

Wufei's words ran out and his eyes widened.

"Tell me... Wufei... " Duo leaned forward, against the hold on his collar which had loosened. "What were you _doing_ to him? What were you doing to him to make him think you were God?" Duo felt the trickle of breath from open lips caress his own, an inch away. The black eyes were big enough to eat the world. "Did you have him in this cargo hold?" Duo whispered. "With its neat hooks and the bypassed security that allows you to shoot the bodies out into space? With your medical kit, to make it last long enough, and your cheap throw-away clothes you can bundle off with the corpse, to get rid of blood stains?"

Duo leaned forward that last inch, touched the open, silent mouth with his own. Soft. Like the silk.

"Don't lie to me. I've been very honest with you. And now that I look at you... really look at you... I can see the pain and the blood on you. You don't just kill them, do you. You tear out their minds and souls. What did you do to him... ?"

"None of your business." Voice hoarse. The eyes suddenly came back into focus and the hand on his collar yanked him back a few inches.

"I might say it is," Duo chuckled, clanking his chains. "Besides, hey, I'm curious too! You said I was the only one among us pilots without guilt, but that's not true. You never showed the slightest hesitation or remorse either. I don't think you were entirely what you appeared to be back then either, Chang Wufei. Hmm? So come on, let's get to know each other properly here."

"If you want me to be honest, fine." The fine lips twisted in a snarl. The eyes were still black, empty holes. "You know I'm going to kill you."

Duo shrugged.

"You don't believe me?!"

"Death? It's in the future."

Wufei stared. Then dropped the collar, took a step back and rubbed his eyes. "Right. Disassociated state. It can show up linked to psychopathy. Charismatic, obsessed with your own ends, completely amoral... Other people have no existence for you; you have no empathy for them. And even your own death doesn't scare you; you're too dissociated from it, you're unable to believe it's going to happen."

Duo looked at him in some amusement. He was the God of Death, he killed, forever, he would always be here, steeped in blood. And he was about to die - every second, since he was a baby, he was about to die, a lamb before God, his life snuffed out like one of millions of candles, and nothing much more to get excited about. These two facts existed side by side in his mind, without conflict. For they were both true. But he didn't say anything. He felt it would give poor Wufei a bigger headache. He was real, but he still seemed to have a hard time wrapping his head around certain concepts.

"What did you want me to say? Hmm? Tell me," Duo murmured, voice warm and persuasive. "Why are you threatening me? What can you threaten me with anyway, you just told me you're going to kill me." The thought didn't mean anything; it never did. Even when Duo hit the self-destruct button, Death was always in the future. Always. Next second or next century, his own or someone else's; it was the only constant. Until it happened, it didn't exist.

"I'm going to space you, Maxwell," Wufei looked up at him with cold lethality. "If you tell me what I want to hear, I will space your body with a bullet between the eyes. Otherwise I turn around right now, close the inner hatch and crack the airlock."

Duo grinned. "Go ahead."

" ...What?"

God smiled. The fear of the void was clawing inside, but he'd accepted it now. In a way, he even wanted this. If he had to go, he wanted it to be the best, the most perfect way. What better way than raw space, the greatest, biggest killer of all?

"Go ahead and space me, Chang. I told you all I can. I mean, I can give you names and such - but I don't think the trip is long enough."

The black eyes just stared at him. Duo thought he detected a bit of reluctant respect. He bet Chang didn't often meet someone who'd bested this deepest of fears, like Wufei himself had done.

"And that's not what you want to hear, anyway, is it." The complicit smile pulled at the bruises on Duo's face. "What is it, Wufei? What can fill the darkness in those beautiful eyes of yours... ? I can feel its shape. I can taste it, a savor of screams, and tears, and blood and pain, but not the pain that you have in those clever fists, not even the pain in that remote control over there. What do you want?"

The eyes went cold, hard as space. Wufei grabbed him by the throat in one lighting movement. The chains clanked. Fingers tightened. Duo could feel the blood pounding on either side of them. The future reached out for Duo and he grinned at it like Shinigami.

"I want to know," he gasped, the air choking. He moved his lips; the dark eyes fixed on them, hoping that in this last instant he would give Wufei... what?

" ...I want to know you... "

The fingers tightened. Blood screamed in his ear as it rushed back up to drown his mind in spots of red. "Don't... Wufei... " he mouthed, pleading, smiling, laughing, wanting. "I want to know you... and I have many more to kill... "

Many, many more...The universe was a giant obstacle course and shooting range. Shinigami defended some portions of it, with magnificent randomness - some people, some colonies, or just a flower he fancied - and he kept score with the rest, but at the end, there was only him and God, as always, as it had been since his first real thoughts, after Solo and the plague... Shinigami, and his big, violent buddy Deathscythe, and a few real people, like Heero. And... it was too bad that God was reaching for him now. This Wufei - not the stuck-up little brat of the war, but this one, the real one - was... appealing. So very... interesting...

Darkness swam up from Wufei's eyes, and buried him.

 

 

Duo opened his eyes. He wasn't particularly surprised. Death stayed in the future, but that's where it had always been, and always would be. He wondered, as he blinked the blurriness from his eyes, and tried to swallow through a badly bruised throat, why people cared so much about it, feared it so. It was wise to respect it, worship it, take steps to avoid it. But fear it? Try to bargain with it when it was reaching out for you? Try to whimper and run for it, when the future became now? No. He'd never quite grasped the concept...

Hmm. Where the hell was he... ?

He almost chuckled. Oh, lovely. He was on his ship, in his bunk. That was just so deliciously unexpected. Of course Wufei couldn't have put him in jail, not with the mark of his knuckles all over Duo's stomach, and what Duo knew, and guessed. And he couldn't space Duo. Right? Because Duo hadn't given Wufei what he needed.

Duo rolled himself painfully off his bunk and hobbled towards the cockpit screen, favoring his knee. He was still on the mining colony. And he'd probably better get away from here fast. He'd left traces of himself in the bank - a detailed and rather sarcastic analysis of their security flaws spray-painted across their main vault, for one. They wouldn't report it, once they realized he'd not stolen anything. But they might have private investigators who could make life tricky for him if they found him still docked when they decided to check outgoing ships.

He slipped into the seat, ran through take-off checks, warned the little men at Control, who thought they were real and had a really important job, that he was about to take off.

His mind was elsewhere.

Preventers had the best security system, but there were ways, there were ways... Duo chuckled as he began to plan, and stared out at space, dark as a pair of black eyes.

You probably should have killed me, Wufei. Though I don't think you could. But now I'm curious. Very curious. You're real to me now. And... very interesting. My beautiful dark angel. I'm dying to learn what drives your heart to beat, what feeds the darkness in your eyes.

It was quite likely that one or the other of the two men would not survive Death's sudden passion. But that didn't matter, really.

Shinigami was going to have fun!


	2. Angel of Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He should have killed Duo when he had the chance, Wufei decides (about three times a day). The man is clinically ill and utterly irredeemable. Unlike Wufei who is perfectly normal and quite content with the choices in his life.  
> Was that a knock on a metaphorical door?

The kid barreled right at him. Wufei caught him by the shoulder instinctively.

"Oh, sorry, mist-" the end of the apology ended in an undignified squeak as the child looked up.

"Douglas! I told you not to run! Oh, I'm so sorry, Officer. Douglas," the mother added in a hiss. "Stop staring."

Douglas' mouth was open and he was turning an interesting shade of white. His mother looked from him to Wufei, puzzled. She only saw the Preventer uniform, the badge, the professional air of the young dark Asian man before her.

Her boy, being a child of approximately six years of age, Wufei judged, had not yet evolved the automatic screening process most humans put in place to interpret the world for them. Douglas was seeing what was really in front of his eyes.

Wufei smiled. It was an automatic reaction, hot-wired into the human mind; a gesture to reassure. Wufei was a bit distracted by his current case and had not thought to restrain the gesture.

Douglas looked like he was about to faint, so Wufei put the smile away again.

"Be careful, Douglas," he murmured, probably scarring the kid for life, but he had to say something for the mother's benefit.

Douglas hiccupped, spun and buried himself in his mother's skirt.

Wufei nodded at the mother's twittered apology and walked off again. Normally he cleared his mind of all thoughts while he was outside like this. His mental discipline had lapsed. This case was draining... and it had been nearly a week since he'd been home, too. He'd been dozing at the office, and then two days in Saltzburg on that unimportant investigation for the Preventers, followed by a little stop for information overnight, dictated by the duty. Yes, he needed to go home and rest, regain some control. Then he'd be better apt at thinking about his latest task. And he would stop frightening young children and animals with the thoughts on his face.

The small bungalow, a modern building not far off the old centre of town, came into view. Wufei pushed the iron gate closed behind him with some relief, shutting away the crowded streets. Why were there so many people? Oh yes, it was Saturday, wasn't it...

The front door opened with the gentle beep that indicated that his security net over the house had not been disturbed. He walked through the rooms that had been furnished piecemeal out of a catalog and arranged according to their pictures. The few guests he'd hosted had complimented him on his taste. Wufei ignored the surroundings; they fitted him, in the same way his Preventer jacket fitted him, and they had the same purpose. He went into what he guessed would be the study if he actually lived here, and checked the security and monitors thoroughly. Nobody had disturbed anything. With a sigh of relief, he headed towards the basement. Soon, he'd be home.

The passageway was hidden by a careful contraption of boxes piled high, seemingly precarious, but they were carefully nailed together and could be shoved aside if you knew exactly where to push to put the counterbalance into operation. He went through the revealed hole, after checking the security net again automatically. His laptop dug into his sides as he squirmed through the narrow portion. Then his steps echoed along brickwork as he headed down to the old catacombs.

Home.

He relaxed as the reinforced steel door hissed shut behind him and the 'secured' light went to green. He shed his uniform as he headed towards the bathroom. The furniture in here was spare but rich, oriental in style, a reflection of his fastidious taste, dark wood and steel with few colors. The gun cabinet, the instrument room, the study with its research area and its list of names, were also reflections of himself, and the reason he needed to keep his home secure. Besides he didn't want other people here. Solitude and self-reliance were childhood reflexes.

Water splashed into the big tub. Wufei stretched, his muscles playing. He caught sight of himself in the mirror.

Huh. No wonder Douglas had been about to puke his little guts out. Most civilians reacted that way when they saw a dangerous weapon, unsheathed.

Good.

He relaxed slightly as he slipped into the water. It felt good to be home. But the case he was working on was arduous. He was still tense. He stared at the dark Scandinavian blue tiles of the elegant bathroom. The water was hot, he could tell by the way it was steaming and his skin was pinking. He swished it around with his hand, rubbing it over his shoulders until he started to feel a little warm.

"The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small," he whispered. He would get the rich bastard eventually. It was only a matter of time. As long as he didn't drive himself into the ground.

The saying was from another time, another culture than his, but he liked it. The mills of God...

Dammit he just couldn't relax.

Wufei started to frown.

He stood up, toweled himself off summarily, and slipped on the silk robe he kept in the bathroom. But he didn't head towards his meditation chair, or his comfortable bed, or towards the bookcase. He went into the study and called up the surveillance images from the house above. A quick check confirmed that no one had been into the house above his home. The security up there wasn't the best; it wouldn't keep a determined searcher out. Some had broken into the apparently inhabited house at times, and he'd identified them in the pictures and hunted them down, and had them explain their interest. Old OZ personnel, looking for revenge, a few criminals wanting the rep of taking down a Preventer. Pretty much what he'd expected.

Wufei frowned and turned to the pictures that the camera at the door had taken of the street outside. He hit the fast-forward, three times the speed, and watched men and women bounce across the screen, noting stances, faces, any pauses. He sometimes did this, for safety reasons and because he liked it. He liked seeing the world and its people in shades of grey. He could fool himself into thinking that it was that easy, that the shades of grey he sought were visible on their faces instead of hidden by their deceiving colors.

When he was a child - but not like Douglas, he'd always been a drawn sword; brought up for a purpose, forged rather. But when he was a child, he thought the world was black and white.

That was incorrect. Everybody was grey. That was what the war had taught him. Some were simply more tainted than others. They could fool themselves about it, but it was there.

'No one is innocent... '

The words came back to him again, in the cheeky drawl. That was true. He'd never met an entirely innocent person. Except for children, and the world rubbed off on them sooner than most adults ever realized. Everywhere he looked: shades of grey. Wufei used his self-discipline to ignore the smaller, petty faults that beset most of the populace, to concentrate on the far end of the spectrum. He already had too much to do, and he had to be careful. Who would do the duty if he ended up in jail? Not just anybody could do it. It was already taxing his considerable resources to the limit - bloody rich industrialist bastard, this one had so many layers of security, Wufei couldn't even get confirmation that the creature was as guilty as he suspected he was. And once he found that confirmation, not many other people would be able to get near enough to the criminal to question him. No, Wufei knew that he was the only one who could do the job, and that meant he had to be careful going about it. To borrow and slightly mangle someone else's phrase, Wufei was not entirely sane by the standards of the grey world outside - and quite aware of it, thank you - but he wasn't crazy.

...He was thinking way too much about Duo these days...

It had been stupid to leave the man alive. Taking a life needlessly was something Wufei did with great reluctance and after much consideration. That was something else the war had taught him. He no longer slaughtered mercilessly a bunch of idiots because they had bought wholesale someone else's grand ideal. No, each person was his own sovereign, the master of his own important choices, the one responsible for the shades of grey within their soul, and had to be treated as such. But Wufei wasn't sure Duo actually had a soul. The look in his eyes when he'd said he killed people just because he could-... Wufei should have killed him.

But he couldn't.

Because Duo might one day come to regret his actions, get over his madness. Or at least, that's why Wufei wanted to believe he'd spared-

_Duo?!_

Wufei scrolled back in the surveillance film frantically. He was watching the footage of five days ago. His sharp eyes had caught the black-clad figure hastily hunching away from the camera's glass eye, tugging the cap firmly over his head, body language nonchalant - but Wufei knew him.

The lights went out.

Wufei's hand was in the desk's drawer in a split second. His fingers touched wood instead of the cold metal of his gun.

Duo's MO came back to him, and he went over it calmly. Only attacks high security setups - simply because he liked the challenge, apparently. Before attacking, he went through the place carefully, looking for mementos and disarming the victim.

Wufei did realize he was the victim in this case, but the knowledge was like his uniform, his case reports, his unblemished record. They belonged to the Chang Wufei who was a good agent of the Preventers, a tax-paying home-owner, a model citizen. The one Douglas' mother had seen. That one lived in the house upstairs, and stayed there.

Down here, Wufei was something else entirely.

Duo had just spared him the trouble of hunting him down to get rid of him like he should have done in the first place.

He stood silently. His home was a hermetically sealed box of steel and concrete, built into the old catacombs beneath the city. No light would penetrate here. The darkness was absolute. But it was his home, and he knew it better. There were a few bolt-holes carefully hidden that only he knew about, but he had no intention of running.

Wufei walked confidently out of the study, heading towards the sword rack. His dao had been in its usual place earlier. The sword would be just as good as a gun. He moved slowly, every sense a lethal trap. Maxwell killed with a knife, a short, very sharp blade according to forensics, which meant he would get within arm's reach. His last mistake.

"You move like a panther... "

The words were a whisper behind him, some distance off. Wufei paused. The enemy was near the wall, not far from the corner. Remarkable; Wufei could sense no presence there at all. Maxwell was good. Could he turn and rush him, pin him in the corner?

" ...I like the robe... a lot... "

Wufei was absolutely still. The voice had echoed a bit further away, from near the kitchen entrance, but Wufei had heard not the slightest hint of noise or movement. He's very good... the thought was strangely admiring, piercing the cold calm that held his soul safe when he was about to do the duty. Well, no one could deny Maxwell was the stealthiest among a very exclusive number of accomplished killers.

"It's so soft... I touched it while you were bathing... "

Wufei's eyes widened until sparks of red marred the darkness before them. What?! He's lying! No, he never lies. An anomaly in a psychopath, actually (Wufei had done a lot of research after coming back from that fruitless 'Maxwell' mission a month ago). Normally, the clinical psychopaths such as Maxwell lied freely and with considerable pleasure, because they felt absolutely no constraints from the normal mores of society, in fact they felt completely untouched by them. Duo must have decided to never lie for a private reason, one of his own, inviolable rules. Wufei clobbered a tendril of curiosity that was trying to take root in his mind.

Concentrate. He'd upgraded the amount of danger he was in, though he felt no fear. He hadn't felt fear in, well, he couldn't remember how long. But the chances of getting injured or killed were high, and he couldn't afford that. So he now had to address the Maxwell problem. He should have taken care of this before, but he didn't like to go against the imperative that animated him. I suppose I have my own rules, he mused, which I follow as rigorously as that maniac.

He hesitated, then turned towards the kitchen. He was starting to get into tune with Maxwell. He was starting to understand him. He thought that Duo had shown more of himself to Wufei than he had any to other person, well, anybody still alive, and Wufei had touched enough evil to know its patterns and elaborate on them. So he knew, without needing to go and check, that while he was working in the study, Maxwell had gone and removed the sword from its elegant wooden stand. If he managed to kill Wufei, he'd probably keep it as a memento. Wufei hoped so, in the small private part of himself that the cold and solitude protected, like a freeze-dried, vacuum-packed flower. He would want the blade cherished even if he died.

The idea of resenting Maxwell as his potential killer crossed the part of his mind that wore the uniform and took care of the Preventer duties assigned to him, but it didn't go any further. You didn't resent death. If Duo was strong enough to take his life, it would be petty to resent him.

It was the duty that troubled him. Who would do his job?

The kitchen tiles were cool beneath his feet. He opened a drawer and pretended to scrounge around for a knife. He'd rather use his hands than something so crude, but he hoped to get a reaction-

An indrawn breath - near the kitchen entrance-

Wufei did not let him speak; he spun, wrenched open the fridge door and leapt-

The darkness refused to be broken. It made him stumble. Then he turned and glared towards the spot where the fridge was. He should have noticed it wasn't humming; Maxwell had caught him off-balance. He was having a hard time concentrating, and felt a cold fury at his own weakness, the little curiosity that was trying to distract him.

The laughter, near the other side of the living room, informed him that his attacker had realized he was off his game as well, and was enjoying being the cause.

Wufei gamely went back to the fridge, felt for the plug. The electrical cable was intact. That meant that Maxwell had cut the electricity in his whole house. Even though it was heavily protected by several layers of security.

Well done, Duo.

"You are easily the hardest I've come across, Wufei. It took me four days to get into this place and wire it to my convenience. I crack most banks in less than forty-eight hours."

Wire... ?

"I have this nifty little remote control -"

Every light in the house flashed on, causing Wufei to flinch and blink- then darkness again.

"It's very much like the one that you used on your ship, but it's wired to your house. I have your inner space in my hand... "

Wufei stood in the centre of the living room, turning slowly. The voice was near the bedroom door.

" ...That doesn't seem to bother you though. I thought, with all this effort at creating this neat secret lair, you'd be a bit more miffed at its invasion." Duo's voice sounded disappointed.

Interesting. How did Duo know Wufei wasn't upset? He couldn't see Wufei... could he?

"No matter," Duo sighed. "I have other stuff to have fun with."

Voice in the bedroom, behind the partially closed door.

Wufei lunged, hammered the door open, threw himself towards where the voice had been - and flinched, gasping, as something caught his throat. It was gone almost immediately, a 'toing' signaling it had torn loose from where it had been tied on either side of the room. It fluttered against his chest and he caught it automatically. A ribbon. Silky smooth against his palm, incongruous. The message was clear. 'It coulda been piano wire, buddy'.

"Things like that... " the voice was near the kitchen again, and sounded highly amused. "I have a couple more goodies scattered around, so maybe you shouldn't move around too much. I don't want you injuring yourself. Yet."

Wufei dragged the ribbon through his fingers thoughtfully as he returned, still blind, towards the living room.

"What are you after, Duo?" he asked abruptly.

"After?" the voice was still near the kitchen, as if daring him to come after it. "What do you think, Wufei? I mean, you know I am the God of Death. What do you think I want?"

"What you are is a homicidal psychopath with religious delusions. That means your methods have their own inner logic. That logic is probably beyond me, but it is quite rigorous. You do not want to just butcher me like you do your regular victims. I know your MO. You do not toy with them; they don't even see you coming. What do you want?"

There was a moment of silence, and then the voice sounded out near the bedroom again. "You're cute when you're thinking." The voice expressed an amused pout perfectly. "It's true; I'm not treating you like one of my regular clay pigeons. That doesn't mean I won't kill you, mind. You're real. That changes all the rules."

Real. Maxwell had used that term before. Apparently Wufei had qualified as someone on Duo's level in the psychopath's twisted view of the universe where other people didn't quite exist. Lucky me, Wufei thought sarcastically.

"Let's cut to the chase, Maxwell. And come in here, like a man," he added.

Silence for a few seconds.

"Come in here? What do you mean, Wufei?" The voice was at one side of the living room again.

Wufei strode away from it, towards the kitchen. He felt around until he touched the very expensive speakers he'd inserted into the wall at several spots in his home, so that he could listen to music in the living room, his study, the kitchen, in his bedroom... The spots from which Duo's voice had come. With one savage wrench he ripped out speaker and cables, breaking the circuit. A little squawk heralded the demise of the live system.

"It must have taken you awhile," Wufei murmured thoughtfully, dropping the speaker to bounce against the carpet with a muffled crunch. "Wiring the lights to one circuit breaker and the speakers to another. And you're watching me through my own security monitors, aren't you. They can pick up infrared and heat signatures." He didn't expect an answer, of course. He headed towards the hallway leading back to the house above. Duo would be gone by the time Wufei reached the monitors in the 'study' upstairs. He wondered why he was slightly relieved at the thought.

A whisper of movement-

Wufei turned instinctively, punching the air savagely. He brushed cloth with his knuckles - smell of oil and sharpened metal - something whistled as it passed near his head.

He stepped back, and his hair fell around his face. The sliced fastener made a tiny sound as it tumbled to the carpet beneath his bare feet.

"I bet you look much nicer with your hair down."

The lights came on, blinding- off again.

"Yup. I was right. Hmmm." It was practically a purr.

Wufei glared at the darkness where he'd seen, in a flash of light, the figure in a tight black suit. Tight black suit and night goggles. Probably able to pick up heat signature, since there was no light in his apartment to amplify. Unless Maxwell had an infrared torch...

"It would have been a good idea to monitor you from above. You're smart. I didn't think of that," Duo admitted with a chuckle.

The voice was moving fast now, continuously. Wufei couldn't hear footsteps though. He felt sure that if he lunged, he'd be rewarded with empty air and a sarcastic remark.

"But as it happens, Fei, I like to get close and personal."

There'd been the slightest shuffle. Duo had bumped against something... so he didn't have an infrared torch. He was tracking Wufei by heat signature, and he must have memorized the house layout.

"I did patch into your fantastic speaker system - beautiful job, man - and I was using a subvocal mic."

So Wufei couldn't hear his real voice, and had been chasing electronic echoes from the start. He wondered how Duo had managed to restrain his fits of laughter.

"And all this for what?" Wufei stood where he was, thinking. And he was also curious; an emotion he'd not felt for awhile. He tried to stamp it out, but it just wouldn't die.

A feeling of motion-

Wufei moved, but it was too late. He lost the thin thread of presence, and was left only with the memory of the brush of a body against his shoulder and the heat of a kiss lingering on his cheek.

"I wanted to get to know you better... "

Duo's voice was lighter and slightly out of breath. Wufei rubbed the fading patch of heat on his skin, and moved towards his meditation corner.

"I spent a lot of time in your study. Did you really kill all those men? And women," Duo added in a voice of someone who'd heard about political correctness and thought this was probably the appropriate time to apply it.

"No." Wufei picked up the meditation chair with one hand and without changing his stance or making a sound. It was a carbon reproduction of an antique. It would not pick up his heat signature unless he kept it in his hand a long time.

"No?" The voice was near his bedroom and sounded puzzled and disappointed.

"No. Some committed suicide, others died of their injuries, one fell out of a twenty-third story window while trying to escape."

"Ah." The voice was a purr of contentment. "Which one of them tortured Sally to death?"

Wufei didn't drop the chair, and he was pretty sure his temperature didn't even flicker in Duo's goggles. In fact, he was surprised he'd registered on them at all. "He's not in there."

"Oh? I'd thought he'd be the first." The voice was still circling, slower now. Trying to understand. Wufei wondered why that made his heart flicker, when the mention of Sally - and the flash of memory of her bloodied body carved into something no longer even remotely human, her eyes, once so calm and kind but now glazed and frantic - had not.

"No. Sally's killer wasn't the first confession I received. And it was a few criminals after him that I realized that if I didn't keep some kind of record, I'd get them mixed up eventually." Which was unthinkable.

He put the chair down near the center of the room, where his instincts told him to.

"Yes, you have a quite impressive number in there. I have to admit to being ever so slightly impressed. Confessions, hm?" Duo sounded wise, but Wufei snorted.

"Don't pretend you understand, Maxwell. Confessions - admissions of guilt - regrets - they're in the past. They don't have any significance for you. You do not understand me at all."

"Well, a little bit." Duo sounded... oddly sad. Wufei hesitated on his way to the sword stand. The tone... it... touched... he shook his head and picked up the stand.

"So you hunt them down. And torture their confessions out of them. I'm surprised Sally's murderer wasn't your first. She was nice." He could have been talking about his favorite flavor of ice cream; that's how he said 'nice'.

"She was a good woman," Wufei agreed. "But she made a mistake. She went alone to meet someone whose darkness she could not comprehend, and I wasn't with her to defend her. At one point, heart and courage alone are not enough. How did you find out about her?" Wufei pulled the wooden spars out of the sword stand and swished them around.

"Rumors in the underworld. Newspaper cuttings, though her name had been withheld. Some Preventer files I managed to hack into. The fact that she was your only friend, apart from us other pilots, and she was no longer around. Was she your lover? You don't think you're actually going to hit me with those, do you?"

"No, and yes. In that order." Wufei moved towards the voice.

"So you tortured that man to death for revenge-" the voice was moving.

"No."

" ...No?"

"I do not work for revenge. The duty laid at my feet is to see to Justice. As long as I have lived, that is what I have worked for. I did not understand its truth back during the war, not all of it. Sally's murderer was the first confession I actively sought." Wufei moved again. He was speaking absently. He was keeping Duo distracted. He didn't really care if Duo understood him or not. He told himself all this sternly, denying the faint stirring of warmth at sharing these words for the first time ever.

"I would have arrested the murderous dog, but the chain of evidence had been compromised by some technicality. I'd been working for the Preventers for four months, I didn't understand those things very well back then. I looked for him. I thought, if I had his confession, he would stand trial."

A burst of merry laughter. "I don't know much about the law, but even I know that torture is not a legal tool that stands too well in court."

"I had his confession pretty much voluntarily, once I caught him. He didn't make too much fuss. He was a rich drug baron. He laughed at me. Said he'd continue to run his empires behind bars. Said he'd tortured Sally as a warning to me, and he'd find someone else I cared about and do it again. I think he was a bit unbalanced, he had no real notion of consequences. I told him I had no one I cared about, but... I could see he wasn't really realizing what he'd done. He hadn't actually truly confessed. A real confession... "

Wufei paused, his voice echoing in darkness.

"A real confession tears out the soul. It makes tyrants weep. It brings down the proud. It makes you face your sins, your petty reasons, your vacuous desires. And they devour you. The purity of it- some people cannot bear it. They prefer to die."

Like Treize. Treize had been the one to show him the way. Treize had shown him just how much self-knowledge could be one's own judge, jury and executioner.

Well, technically, Wufei had been his executioner, but Treize had merely used him to leave a life he knew he no longer deserved. Wufei always gave that option to those who had confessed. Most of them took it.

"It didn't take too long, and not as much pain as I thought it would, not for him. When Sally's killer realized the full extent of his crimes... when he saw real Justice... at the end, he begged me to kill him. So I did. I wasn't interested in his further suffering. Justice had been served. He'd seen himself as he truly was. He'd counted the cost of all his victims and he knew their pain. So I put a bullet in the back of his neck and left him for his men to bury."

He darted towards the faint sound of a shuffle, wooden rods swinging. There was not the faintest hint of noise, except for his weapons biting air. He spun on instinct, struck again- heading towards-

A shout, and a fumble where he'd left the chair.

Wufei dropped the sticks and pounced. He tackled warm flesh in sleek cloth. He shoved the chair aside and wrestled the figure to the ground.

A breathless laugh beneath him. And the lights came on.

He stared down at a heart-shaped face and an impish grin beneath chunky black goggles.

"Damn! You got me! You're good, Fei!" Duo was breathless.

Wufei blew a strand of hair out of his eyes. His body was weighing Duo down, his hands like a vice on the slighter man's arms. A good struggle, and, if Duo didn't manage to pull his knife, Wufei could snap his neck...

He didn't move.

The grin widened and the head turned. Wufei's eyes leapt to follow the gaze behind the goggles. Duo's hand. Holding a remote with several switches and buttons... and a deadman switch, which Duo was holding depressed in his palm. If Duo's hand went limp, the switch would release and-

Damn... I thought he went down a bit too easy... he couldn't let go of that switch.

Wufei looked down at the impish grin, and the goggles looked back at him.

"You son of a bitch." Wufei's voice was strangely taut. He... was normally much more calm, even faced with death. Nothing much seemed to shiver the cold distance he'd put around himself at the end of the war. But Duo... "You wired my house to blow?"

"Uh-uh! Call it security!"

"I call it bloody insane."

"Takes one to know one."

"Fuck you, Maxwell."

"Don't make promises you won't keep, Fei."

" ...Uh?" Wufei frowned, and then caught on. He snarled, releasing his hold on one of Duo's arms to rip off the goggles. Two blue eyes blinked and then sparkled at him. Insane. Completely insane. He's in the same house, he'll go too if he releases that switch.

"I have three questions!"

Wufei stared at his captive. "What makes you think I'll answer even one-" the deadman switch waved in front of his face before being whisked out of reach again.

"You...would blow us both up just to get me to answer?" Why wasn't he surprised?

"Well, you can try something violent and find out!" The grin was cocky. "Why did you fuck Heero?"

Wufei felt his jaw drop a fraction. It wasn't the question he was expecting. At all.

" ...Pain wouldn't work with him any more than it had with you." The fact he answered was also a surprise. It had nothing to do with Duo's threats.

"Yeah, you can torture Heero until your hands fall off and pain will get you nowhere." Duo nodded sympathetically, as if relating to the difficulty of cracking that tough nut. "Did a little loving work? Did he spill all his pre-war assassinations to you? Does he regret his mistake at New Edwards, his war crimes, all the deaths he caused? Did he confess?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill him?" There was only bright curiosity behind the question.

"No. He declined to take my offer."

Blue eyes narrowed. "Why?"

Why did Duo care? Oh, right. Heero was also 'real' in his universe. Ironic, because...

"Because he's not human, Maxwell. I touched the little that was there, only to realize how shallow it was. He's not even a monster like you." Duo grinned proudly. "He has little concept of what he's doing at all. He's a tool. He'll gladly die, but it has to be for a mission before he can justify it, and that I could not give him. So I left. He may have committed suicide since then, but I doubt it. A robot doesn't switch itself off."

Duo's face shone and he'd never looked so handsome. "I knew it... pure... no-one can truly touch him."

"Was that your second question?"

"No, it was a corollary of the first."

"Humph."

He should worry about what would happen once the three questions were asked and answered. Duo had shown that he was ready to kill himself, he didn't fear death in the conventional sense anyway, the deluded lunatic. He might let go of the switch. Wufei's life was a thing of cold duty and fierce satisfaction in it; he wouldn't particularly regret it. But he had a lot more to do. There were many other people who needed to face justice before he did.

That should matter... but all he could feel was the warmth of Duo's body burning through the thin black suit hugging every hard muscle.

"Second question." Duo slipped out of his grasp slightly. The suit was smooth and warm beneath his fingers, like skin. Duo hoisted himself up on his elbows, Wufei still straddling him. Neither of them glanced at the switch he held negligently. It no longer really mattered. "How come you don't get caught? Granted, I knew what I was looking for, but what I could find of your Preventer track record for bringing back suspects alive, or disappearing off on 'special missions' or holidays shortly before they find new bodies, is rather suspicious."

"Une makes sure that-"

"Une?!"

Wufei felt a ripple of tepid satisfaction that he'd managed to startle the unflappable man.

"You mean she knows about-"

"She knows Justice."

Duo blinked, perplexed. "Erm, actually I'm surprised you never pay her a visit."

"She knows Justice because it's ripped her soul already. Every day, she counts the people she killed, the lives she took." Treize had taught her that, as he'd taught it to Wufei. "That is how she recognized my true nature. We work together on the understanding that I watch her closely. If she begins to forget... "

"You'll make sure she remembers. Painfully. Huh. She doesn't mind?"

"It was her suggestion."

"Whatta woman. Okay, third question."

Duo moved, curling up to lean back against his hands. His warm breath was washing against Wufei's mouth again. It was a sensation the latter had tried not to remember from that time in the shuttle. One of the rare things he'd actively tried to forget.

" ...The reason you spared me, it was because I don't... I won't... I will never... and I even clinically _cannot_... feel the guilt for my crimes. And that makes my death meaningless to you... "

The lips touched his softly. They felt feverish.

"Is that a question?" he could barely understand his own words, his voice was so hoarse.

" ...I guess not... " The lips touched his again. The body beneath his was like an inferno, scorching his inner thighs through the silk of his robe, setting fire to areas that hadn't known heat for quite awhile.

"Now what are you going to do?" Wufei asked, the words shivering onto Duo's lips.

For answer, there was a click and a snap from somewhere outside Wufei's field of vision, which had narrowed down to a pair of blue eyes and warm lips. Then he felt something slip into his hand. He glanced down and stared at the deadman switch. Which, since the house hadn't exploded, he presumed Duo had disarmed before releasing.

He stared back into eyes that danced and sparkled like twin beacons.

The switch landed on the carpet with a thud and Duo grunted as he was slammed back against the floor. But the blue eyes staring up at Wufei held no fear. Probably because the man was insane and didn't realize he was about to die-

Or because he realized that Wufei couldn't begin to approach the notion of his death. Wufei couldn't kill him because Duo couldn't feel guilt, because he would never confess, he was Death without remorse or premeditation, like an accident or a plague. Because he was like a forest fire, joyfully indiscriminate, nearly sinless as a result. Because, in his fearless, insane way, he'd broken into Wufei's home, into his life, and tried to light up the darkness. This bundle of cheerful lethality who had dared to try to understand him, this God of Death knew no reasons, no laws, no rules except the rule of silence that let him kill - or not - when and where he pleased. Duo enjoyed it. That joy flared against Wufei's passions, which had been burning colder than Hell's lights for a long time now. And... Wufei wanted...

"I am going to let you live, Maxwell," he heard himself say. "On sufferance, and only because your skills will be useful to me."

Duo's eyebrows arched up.

"I find myself with a problem. I've been working on it for over three weeks without success. A man. A rich industrialists with ties to several factories which may or may not be producing war heads. I think he's a criminal. But I can't be sure; he keeps his activities too well hidden. I think someone who can worm his way into my home and wire it like you did can probably ferret out the information I need."

"Why don't you just... ask him... ?" Duo breathed, with a carrion crow grin making no doubts about what he meant when he said 'ask'. He arched his hips and Wufei felt the fire reach higher, but he ignored it and shook the collar he'd grabbed.

"I do not harm indiscriminately and without considerable cause. If this man is just a careful businessman with a few petty frauds to his account, I am not going to bother with him. And neither will you! You will not harm those who do not deserve it, and you will not kill the guilty before they confess! Death is too easy an escape from guilt. They have to confess, do you understand?"

"Nope," Duo chirped. "But I think I know what you're trying to say."

"You will kill only those I tell you to. Those who are already broken by what they've done. You can also have the petty criminals who probably deserve it, and who are beneath my notice. That should-" a sneer "-keep you happy. And you will have plenty of opportunities to practice your stealth helping me with my duties."

Duo's grin was brighter than the lights. Because of course, Wufei knew Duo wasn't going to kill or spare on someone else's say-so. But Wufei was going to pretend he didn't know that, and Duo was going to pretend he was going to cooperate, and maybe, just maybe, they might not kill each other right away.

"And while you live here, you will do what I say, understand?"

Duo nodded vigorously, his bangs falling like a veil over his teasing eyes.

"You agree to that?" Wufei asked, not very hopefully.

"Tell you what, Fei," a soft purr while strong hands detached his own from a black collar. "Why don't you try giving me an order and see if I do it? It'll be fun to find out!"

The hands slipped up his arms, felt the cold silk over his chest; it warmed under the touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they lived happily ever after and had lots of little psychos. Er, or something.


End file.
